'. . . I have performed a great exploit--ridden on a donkey five miles deep into the mountain, to an almost inaccessible volcanic ground not far from the stars. Robert on horseback, and Wilson and the nurse (with Baby) on other donkies,--guides of course. We set off at eight in the morning, and returned at six P.M. after dining on the mountain pinnacle, I dreadfully tired, but the child laughing as usual, burnt brick colour for all bad effect. No horse or ass untrained for the mountains could have kept foot a moment where we penetrated, and even as it was, one could not help the natural thrill. No road except the bed of exhausted torrents--above and through the chestnut forests precipitous beyond what you would think possible for ascent or descent. Ravines tearing the ground to pieces under your feet. The scenery, sublime and wonderful, satisfied us wholly, as we looked round on the world of innumerable mountains, bound faintly with the grey sea--and not a human habitation. . . .' The following fragment, which I have received quite without date, might refer to this or to a somewhat later period. 'If he is vain about anything in the world it is about my improved health, and I say to him, "But you needn't talk so much to people, of how your wife walked here with you, and there with you, as if a wife with a pair of feet was a miracle of nature."' Florence: Feb. 18 ('50). '. . . You can scarcely imagine to yourself the retired life we live, and how we have retreated from the kind advances of the English society here. Now people seem to understand that we are to be left alone. . . .' Florence: April 1 ('50). '. . . We drive day by day through the lovely Cascine, just sweeping through the city. Just such a window where Bianca Capello looked out to see the Duke go by--and just such a door where Tasso stood and where Dante drew his chair out to sit. Strange to have all that old world life about us, and the blue sky so bright. . . .' Venice: June 4 (probably '50). '. . . I have been between Heaven and Earth since our arrival at Venice. The Heaven of it is ineffable--never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour and carving, the enchanting silence, the music, the gondolas--I mix it all up together and maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world. 'Do you know when I came first I felt as if I never could go away. But now comes the earth-side.